BV 4501 
,D68 
1892 
Copy 1 







JAMES POTT & CO. 

PUBLISHERS 
NEW YORK. 



The Changed Life 



AN ADDRESS 



HENRY DRUMMOND, F.R.S.E., F.G.S., 

AUTHOR OF "GREATEST THING IN THE WORLD," ETC. 



A UTHOR '5 POPULAR EDITION. 









V m 



NEW YORK, * ffyfy 

JAMES POTT & CO., PUBLISHERS, 
14 and 16 Astor Place. 
1892, 






COPYRIGHT, 1891, BY 

JAMES POTT & CO. 



PREFACE. 

Last autumn, in a book-shop in California, the author 
found a little book with his name upon the title-page — a 
book which he did not know existed ; which he never 
wrote ; nor baptized with the title which it bore. This 
stray publication — taken from shorthand notes of a spoken 
Address — he does not grudge. Already, it seems, it has 
done its small measure of good. But, owing to the im- 
perfections which it contains, it has been thought right to 
issue a more complete edition. 

' The theme, like its predecessors in this series, represents 
but a single aspect of its great subject — the man-ward 
side. The light and shade is apportioned with this in 
view. And the reader's kind attention is asked to this 
limitation, lest he wonder at points being left in shadow 
which theology has always, and rightly, taught us to em- 
phasize. 

. It was the hearing of a simple talk by a friend to some 
plain people in a Highland deer-forest which first called 
the author's attention to the practicalness of this solution 
of the cardinal problem of Christian experience. What 
follows owes a large debt to that Sunday morning. 



THE CHANGED LIFE. 

" I protest that if some great Power would agree to make me 
always think what is true and do what is right, on condition of 
being turned into a sort of clock and wound up every morning, I 
should instantly close with the offer." 

These are the words of Mr. Huxley. The infinite de- 
sirability, the infinite difficulty of being good — the theme 
is as old as humanity. The man does not live from whose 
deeper being the same confession has not risen, or who 
would not give his all to-morrow, if he could " close with 
the offer " of becoming a better man. 

I propose to make that offer now. In all seriousness, 
without being " turned into a sort of clock," the end can 
be attained. Under the right conditions it is as natural 
for character to become beautiful as for a flower ; and if 
on God's earth there is not some machinery for effecting 
it, the supreme gift to the world has been forgotten. This 
is simply what man was made for. With Browning : "I 
say that Man was made to grow, not stop." Or in the 
deeper words of an older Book : " Whom He did fore- 
know, He also did predestinate . . . to be conformed 
to the Image of His Son." 

Let me begin by naming, and in part discarding, some 
processes in vogue already for producing better lives. 
These processes are far from wrong ; in their place they 
may even be essential. One ventures to disparage them 



6 THE CHANGED LIFE. 

only because they do not turn out the most perfect possi- 
ble work. 

The first imperfect method is to rely on Resolution. 
In will-power, in mere spasms of earnestness there is no 
salvation. Struggle, effort, even agony, have their place 
in Christianity, as we shall see ; but this is not where they 
come in. In mid-Atlantic the other day, the Etruria, in 
which I was sailing, suddenly stopped. Something had 
gone wrong with the engines. There were five hundred 
able-bodied men on board the ship. Do you think if we 
had gathered together and pushed against the mast we 
could have pushed it on? When one attempts to sanctify 
himself by effort, he is trying to make his boat go by 
pushing against the mast. He is like a drowning man 
trying to lift himself out of the water by pulling at the 
hair of his own head. Christ held up this method almost 
to ridicule when He said, "Which of you by taking 
thought can add a cubit to his stature? " The one re- 
deeming feature of the self-sufficient method is this — that 
those who try it find out almost at once that it will not 
gain the goal. 

Another experimenter says: "But that is not my 
method. I have seen the folly of a mere wild struggle in 
the dark. I work on a principle. My plan is not to 
waste power on random effort, but to concentrate on a 
single sin. By taking one at a time, and crucifying it 
steadily, I hope in the end to extirpate all." To this, 
unfortunately, there are four objections : For one thing, 
life is too short ; the name of sin is Legion. For another 
thing, to deal with individual sins is to leave the rest of 
the nature for the time untouched. In the third place, a 
single combat with a special sin does not affect the root 



THE CHANGED LIFE. 7 

and spring of the disease. If one only of the channels 
of sin be obstructed, experience points to an almost cer- 
tain overflow through some other part of the nature. 
Partial conversion is almost always accompanied by such 
moral leakage, for the pent-up energies accumulate to the 
bursting point, and the last state of that soul may be 
worse than the first. In the last place, religion does not 
consist in negatives, in stopping this sin and stopping 
that. The perfect character can never be produced with 
a pruning-knife. 

But a third protests: " So be it. I make no attempt 
to stop sins one by one. My method is just the opposite. 
I copy the virtues one by one." The difficulty about the 
copying method is that it is apt to be mechanical. One 
can always tell an engraving from a picture, an artificial 
flower from a real flower. To copy virtues one by one 
has somewhat the same effect as eradicating the vices one 
by one ; the temporary result is an overbalanced and in- 
congruous character. Some one defines a prig as " a 
creature that is over-fed for its size." One sometimes 
finds Christians of this species — over-fed on one side of 
their nature, but dismally thin and starved-looking on the 
other. The result, for instance, of copying Humility, and 
adding it on to an otherwise worldly life, is simply gro- 
tesque. A rabid Temperance advocate, for the same 
reason, is often the poorest of creatures, flourishing on a 
single virtue, and quite oblivious that his Temperance is 
making a worse man of him and not a better. These are 
examples of fine virtues spoiled by association with mean 
companions. Character is a unity, and all the virtues 
must advance together to make the perfect man. This 
method of sanctification. nevertheless, is in the true 



8 THE CHANGED LIFE. 

direction. It is only in the -details of execution that it 
fails. 

A fourth method I need scarcely mention, for it is a 
variation on those already named. It is the very young 
man's method ; and the pure earnestness of it makes it 
almost desecration to touch it. It is to keep a private 
note-book with columns for the days of the week, and a 
list of virtues with spaces against each for marks. This, 
with many stern rules for preface, is stored away in a se- 
cret place, and from time to time, at nightfall, the soul is 
arraigned before it as before a private judgment bar. 
This living by code was Franklin's method ; and I sup- 
pose thousands more could tell how they had hung up in 
their bedrooms, or hid in lock-fast drawers, the rules 
which one solemn day they drew up to shape their lives. 
This method is not erroneous, only somehow its success 
is poor. You bear me witness that it fails? And it fails 
generally for very matter-of-fact reasons — most likely be- 
cause one day we forget the rules. 

All these methods that have been named — the self-suffi- 
cient method, the self-crucifixion method, the mimetic 
method, and the diary method — are perfectly human, per- 
fectly natural, perfectly ignorant, and, as they stand, per- 
fectly inadequate. It is not argued, I repeat, that they 
must be abandoned. Their harm is rather that they dis- 
tract attention from the true working method, and secure 
a fair result at the expense of the perfect one. What 
that perfect method is we shall now go on to ask. 



THE FORMULA OF SANCTIFICATION. 

A formula, a receipt, for Sanctification — can one seri- 
ously speak of this mighty change as if the process were 
as definite as for the production of so many volts of elec- 
tricity ? It is impossible to doubt it. Shall a mechanical 
experiment succeed infallibly, and the one vital experiment 
of humanity remain a chance? Is corn to grow by 
method, and character by caprice? If we cannot calcu- 
late to a certainty that the forces of religion will do their 
work, then is religion vain. And if we cannot express the 
law of these forces in simple words, then is Christianity 
not the world's religion but the world's conundrum. 

Where, then, shall one look for such a formula? Where 
one would look for any formula — among the text-books. 
And if we turn to the text-books of Christianity we shall 
find a formula for this problem as clear and precise as 
any in the mechanical sciences. If this simple rule, more- 
over, be but followed fearlessly, it will yield the result of 
a perfect character as surely as any result that is guaran- 
teed by the laws of nature. The finest expression of this 
rule in Scripture, or indeed in any literature, is probably 
one drawn up and condensed into a single verse by Paul. 
You will find it in a letter — the second to the Corinthians 
— written by him to some Christian people who, in a city 
which was a byword for depravity and licentiousness, 
were seeking the higher life. To see the point of the 



IO THE CHANGED LIFE. 

words we must take them from the immensely improved 
rendering of the Revised translation, for the older Ver- 
sion in this case greatly obscures the sense. They are 
these: "We all, with unveiled face reflecting as a mirror 
the glory of the Lord, are transformed into the same im- 
age from glory to glory, even as from the Lord the Spirit." 

Now observe at the outset the entire contradiction of 
all our previous efforts, in the simple passive " we are 
transformed." We are changed, as the Old Version has 
it — we do not change ourselves. No man can change 
himself. Throughout the New Testament you will find 
that wherever these moral and spiritual transformations 
are described the verbs are in the passive. Presently it 
will be pointed out that there is a rationale in this ; but 
meantime do not toss these words aside as if this passivity 
denied all human effort or ignored intelligible law. What 
is implied for the soul here is no more than is everywhere 
claimed for the body. In physiology the verbs describ- 
ing the processes of growth are in the passive. Growth 
is not voluntary ; it takes place, it happens, it is wrought 
upon matter. So here. " Ye must be born again "—we 
cannot born ourselves. " Be not conformed to this world 
but be ye tra?isformed" — we are subjects to a transforming 
influence, we do not transform ourselves. Not more cer- 
tain is it that it is something outside the thermometer that 
produces a change in the thermometer, than it is some- 
thing outside the soul of man that produces a moral 
change upon him. That he must be susceptible to that 
change, that he must be a party to it, goes without say- 
ing ; but that neither his aptitude nor his will can produce 
it, is equally certain. 

Obvious as it ought to seem, this may be to some an 



THE FORMULA OF SANCTIFICATION. I I 

almost startling revelation. The change we have been 
striving after is not to be produced by any more striving 
after. It is to be wrought upon us by the moulding of 
hands beyond our own. As the branch ascends, and the 
bud bursts, and the fruit reddens under the co-operation 
of influences from the outside air, so man rises to the 
higher stature under invisible pressures from without. 
The radical defect of all our former methods of sanctifi- 
cation was the attempt to generate from within that which 
can only be wrought upon us from without. According 
to the first Law of Motion : Every body continues in its 
state of rest, or of uniform motion in a straight line, ex- 
cept in so far as it may be compelled by impressed forces 
to change that state. This is also a first law of Christian- 
ity. Every man's character remains as it is, or continues 
in the direction in which it is going, until it is compelled 
by impressed forces to change that state. Our failure has 
been the failure to put ourselves in the way of the im- 
pressed forces. There is a clay, and there is a Potter ; 
we have tried to get the clay to mould the clay. 

Whence, then, these pressures, and where this Potter? 
The answer of the formula is " By reflecting as a mirror 
the glory of the Lord we are changed." But this is not 
very clear. What is the " glory " of the Lord, and how 
can mortal man reflect it, and how can that act as an 
"impressed force" in moulding him to a nobler form? 
The word " glory " — the word which has to bear the 
weight of holding those " impressed forces " — is a stranger 
in current speech, and our first duty is to seek out its 
equivalent in working English. It suggests at first a radi- 
ance of some kind, something dazzling or glittering, some 
halo such as the old masters loved to paint round the 



12 THE CHANGED LIFE. 

heads of their Ecce Homos. But that is paint, mere 
matter, the visible symbol of some unseen thing. What 
is that unseen thing? It is that of all unseen things the 
most radiant, the most beautiful, the most Divine, and 
that is Character. On earth, in Heaven, there is nothing 
so great, so glorious as this. The word has many mean- 
ings ; in ethics it can have but one. Glory is character 
and nothing less, and it can be nothing more. The earth 
is " full of the glory of the Lord," because it is full of His 
character. The "Beauty of the Lord" is character. 
" The effulgence of His Glory " is character. " The 
Glory of the Only Begotten " is character, the character 
which is " fulness of grace and truth." And when God 
told His people His name He simply gave them His char- 
acter, His character which was Himself : " And the Lord 
proclaimed the Name of the Lord . . . the Lord, 
the Lord God, merciful and gracious, long-suffering and 
abundant in goodness and truth." Glory then is not 
something intangible, or ghostly, or transcendental. If it 
were this how could Paul ask men to reflect it? Stripped 
of its physical enswathement it is Beauty, moral and spir- 
itual Beauty, Beauty infinitely real, infinitely exalted, yet 
infinitely near and infinitely communicable. 

With this explanation read over the sentence once more 
in paraphrase : We all reflecting as a mirror the character 
of Christ are transformed into the same Image from char- 
acter to character — from a poor character to a better one, 
from a better one to one a little better still, from that to 
one still more complete, until by slow degrees the Perfect 
Image is attained. Here the solution of the problem of 
sanctification is compressed into a sentence : Reflect the 
character of Christ and you will become like Christ. 



THE FORMULA OF SANCTIFICATION. 1 3 

All men are mirrors — that is the first law on which this 
formula is based. One of the aptest descriptions of a 
human being is that he is a mirror. As we sat at table 
to-night the world in which each of us lived and moved 
throughout this day was focussed in the room. What we 
saw as we looked at one another was not one another, 
but one another's world. We were an arrangement of 
mirrors. The scenes we saw were all reproduced ; the 
people we met walked to and fro ; they spoke, they 
bowed, they passed us by, did everything over again as if 
it had been real. When we talked, we were but looking 
at our own mirror and describing what flitted across it ; 
our listening was not hearing, but seeing — we but looked 
on our neighbour's mirror. All human intercourse is a 
seeing of reflections. I meet a stranger in a railway car- 
riage. The cadence of his first word tells me he is Eng- 
lish, and comes from Yorkshire. Without knowing it he 
has reflected his birthplace, his parents, and the long his- 
tory of their race. Even physiologically he is a mirror. 
His second sentence records that he is a politician, and a 
faint inflexion in the way he pronounces The Times re- 
veals his party. In his next remarks I see reflected a 
whole world of experiences. The books he has read, the 
people he has met, the influences that have played upon 
him and made him the man he is — these are all registered 
there by a pen which lets nothing pass, and whose writing 
can never be blotted out. What I am reading in him 
meantime he also is reading in me ; and before the jour- 
ney is over we could half write each other's lives. 
Whether we like it or not, we live in glass houses. The 
mind, the memory, the soul, is simply a vast chamber 
panelled with looking-glass. And upon this miraculous 



14 THE CHANGED LIFE. 

arrangement and endowment depends the capacity of 
mortal souls to "reflect the character of the Lord." 

But this is not all. If all these varied reflections from 
our so-called secret life are patent to the world, how close 
the writing, how complete the record, within the soul it- 
self? For the influences we meet are not simply held for 
a moment on the polished surface and thrown off again 
into space. Each is retained where first it fell, and stored 
up in the soul forever. 

This law of Assimilation is the second, and by far the 
most impressive truth which underlies the formula of sanc- 
tification — the truth that men are not only mirrors, but 
that these mirrors, so far from being mere reflectors of the 
fleeting things they see, transfer into their own inmost 
substance, and hold in permanent preservation, the things 
that they reflect. No one knows how the soul can hold 
these things. No one knows how the miracle is done. 
No phenomenon in nature, no process in chemistry, no 
chapter in necromancy can even help us to begin to un- 
derstand this amazing operation. For, think of it, the 
past is not only focussed there, in a man's soul, it is there. 
How could it be reflected from there if it were not there ? 
All things that he has ever seen, known, felt, believed of 
the surrounding world are now within him, have become 
part of him, in part are him — he has been changed into 
their image. He may deny it, he may resent it, but they 
are there. They do not adhere to him, they are transfused 
through him. He cannot alter or rub them out. They 
are not in his memory, they are in him. His soul is as 
they have filled it, made it, left it. These things, these 
books, these events, these influences are his makers. In 
their hands are life and death, beauty and deformity. 



THE FORMULA OF SANCTIFICATION. 1 5 

When once the image or likeness of any of these is fairly- 
presented to the soul, no power on earth can hinder two 
things happening — it must be absorbed into the soul, and 
forever reflected back again from character. 

Upon these astounding yet perfectly obvious psycholog- 
ical facts, Paul bases his doctrine of sanctification. He 
sees that character is a thing built up by slow degrees, 
that it is hourly changing for better or for worse according 
to the images which flit across it. One step further and 
the whole length and breadth of the application of these 
ideas to the central problem of religion will stand before us. 



THE ALCHEMY OF INFLUENCE. 

If events change men, much more persons. No man 
can meet another on the street without making some mark 
upon him. We say we exchange words when we meet ; 
what we exchange is souls. And when intercourse is very- 
close and very frequent, so complete is this exchange that 
recognisable bits of the one soul begin to show in the 
other's nature, and the second is conscious of a similar 
and growing debt to the first. This mysterious approxi- 
mating of two souls who has not witnessed? Who has 
not watched some old couple come down life's pilgrim- 
age hand in hand, with such gentle trust and joy in one 
another that their very faces wore the self-same look? 
These were not two souls ; it was a composite soul. It 
did not matter to which of the two you spoke, you would 
have said the same words to either. It was quite indiffer- 
ent which replied, each would have said the same. Half 
a century's reflecting had told upon them; they were 
changed into the same image. It is the Law of Influence 
that we become like those whom we habitually admire: these 
had become like because they habitually admired. 
Through all the range of literature, of history, and biog- 
raphy this law presides. Men are all mosaics of other 
men. There was a savour of David about Jonathan and 
a savour of Jonathan about David. Jean Valjean, in the 
masterpiece of Victor Hugo, is Bishop Bienvenu risen 
from the dead. Metempsychosis is a fact. George 
Eliot's message to the world was that men and women 
make men and women. The Family, the cradle of man- 



THE ALCHEMY OF INFLUENCE. 1 7 

kind, has no meaning apart from this. Society itself is 
nothing but a rallying point for these omnipotent forces 
to do their work. On the doctrine of Influence, in short, 
the whole vast pyramid of humanity is built. 

But it was reserved for Paul to make the supreme ap- 
plication of the Law of Influence. It was a tremendous 
inference to make, but he never hesitated. He himself 
was a changed man ; he knew exactly what had done it ; 
it was Christ. On the Damascus road they met, and 
from that hour his life was absorbed in His. The effect 
could not but follow — on words, on deeds, on career, on 
creed. The "impressed forces" did their vital work. 
He became like Him Whom he habitually loved. " So 
we all," he writes, "reflecting as a mirror the glory of 
Christ, are changed into the same image." 

Nothing could be more simple, more intelligible, more 
natural, more supernatural. It is an analogy from an 
everyday fact. Since we are what we are by the impacts 
of those who surround us, those who surround themselves 
with the highest will be those who change into the high- 
est. There are some men and some women in whose 
company we are always at our best. While with them we 
cannot think mean thoughts or speak ungenerous words. 
Their mere presence is elevation, purification, sanctity. 
All the best stops in our nature are drawn out by their in- 
tercourse, and we find a music in our souls that was never 
there before. Suppose even that influence prolonged 
through a month, a year, a lifetime, and what could not 
life become? Here, even on the common plane of life, 
talking our language, walking our streets, working side 
by side, are sanctifiers of souls ; here, breathing through 
common clay, is Heaven ; here, energies charged even 



1 8 THE CHANGED LIFE. 

through a temporal medium with the virtue of regenera- 
tion. If to live with men, diluted to the millionth degree 
with the virtue of the Highest, can exalt and purify the 
nature, what bounds can be set to the influence of Christ? 
To live with Socrates — with unveiled face — must have 
made one wise ; with Aristides, just. Francis of Assisi 
must have made one gentle ; Savonarola, strong. But 
to have lived with Christ? To have lived with Christ 
must have made one like Christ ; that is to say, A Chris- 
tian. 

As a matter of fact, to live with Christ did produce this 
effect. It produced it in the case of Paul. And during 
Christ's lifetime the experiment was tried in an even more 
startling form. A few raw unspiritual, uninspiring men, 
were admitted to the inner circle of His friendship. The 
change began at once. Day by day we can almost see 
the first disciples grow. First there steals over them the 
faintest possible adumbration of His character, and occa- 
sionally, very occasionally, they do a thing, or say a thing 
that they could not have done or said had they not been 
living there. Slowly the spell of His Life deepens. 
Reach after reach of their nature is overtaken, thawed, 
subjugated, sanctified. Their manners soften, their words 
become more gentle, their conduct more unselfish. As 
swallows who have found a summer, as frozen buds the 
spring, their starved humanity bursts into a fuller life. 
They do not know how it is, but they are different men. 
One day they find themselves like their Master, going 
about and doing good. To themselves it is unaccount- 
able, but they cannot do otherwise. They were not told 
to do it, it came to them to do it. But the people who 
watch them know well how to account for it — "They 



THE ALCHEMY OF INFLUENCE. 1 9 

have been," they whisper, " with Jesus." Already even, 
the mark and seal of His character is upon them — " They 
have been with Jesus." Unparalleled phenomenon, that 
these poor fishermen should remind other men of Christ! 
Stupendous victory and mystery of regeneration that mor- 
tal men should suggest to the world, God! 

There is something almost melting in the way His con- 
temporaries, and John especially, speak of the Influence 
of Christ. John lived himself in daily wonder at Him ; 
he was overpowered, overawed, entranced, transfigured. 
To his mind it was impossible for any one to come under 
this influence and ever be the same again. " Whosoever 
abideth in Him sinneth not," he said. It was inconceiv- 
able that he should sin, as inconceivable as that ice should 
live in a burning sun, or darkness coexist with noon. If 
any one did sin, it was to John the simple proof that he 
could never have met Christ. " Whosoever sinneth," he 
exclaims, " hath not seen Him, neither known Him." Sin 
was abashed in this Presence. Its roots withered. Its 
sway and victory were for ever at an end. 

But these were His contemporaries. It was easy for 
them to be influenced by Him, for they were every day 
and all the day together. But how can we mirror that 
which we have never seen? How can all this stupendous 
result be produced by a Memory, by the scantiest of all 
Biographies, by One who lived and left this earth eighteen 
hundred years ago? How can modern men to-day make 
Christ, the absent Christ, their most constant companion 
still? The answer is that Friendship is a spiritual thing. 
It is independent of Matter, or Space, or Time. That 
which I love in my friend is not that which I see. What 
influences me in my friend is not his body but his spirit. 



20 THE CHANGED LIFE. 

It would have been an ineffable experience truly to have 
lived at that time — 

" I think when I read the sweet story of old, 
How when Jesus was here among men, 
He took little children like lambs to His fold, 
I should like to have been with Him then. 

' ' I wish that His hand had been laid on my head, 
That His arms had been thrown around me, 
And that I had seen His kind look when He said, 
'Let the little ones come unto Me.' " 

And yet, if Christ were to come into the world again 
few of us probably would ever have a chance of seeing 
Him. Millions of her subjects, in this little country, have 
never seen their own Queen. And there would be mill- 
ions of the subjects of Christ who could never get within 
speaking distance of Him if He were here. Our com- 
panionship with Him, like all true companionship, is a 
spiritual communion. All friendship, all love, human and 
Divine, is purely spiritual. It was after He was risen that 
He influenced even the disciples most. Hence in reflect- 
ing the character of Christ, it is no real obstacle that we 
may never have been in visible contact with Himself. 

There lived once a young girl whose perfect grace of 
character was the wonder of those who knew her. She 
wore on her neck a gold locket which no one was ever 
allowed to open. One day, in a moment of unusual con- 
fidence, one of her companions was allowed to touch its 
spring and learn its secret. She saw written these words 
— "Whom having not seen, I love." That was the secret 
of her beautiful life. She had been changed into the 
Same Image. 

Now this is not imitation, but a much deeper thing. 



THE ALCHEMY OF INFLUENCE. 21 

Mark this distinction. For the difference in the process, 
as well as in the result, may be as great as that between 
a photograph secured by the infallible pencil of the sun, 
and the rude outline from a schoolboy's chalk. Imitation 
is mechanical, reflection organic. The one is occasional, 
the other habitual. In the one case, man comes to God 
and imitates Him ; in the other, God comes to man and 
imprints Himself upon Him. It is quite true that there 
is an imitation of Christ which amounts to reflection. But 
Paul's term includes all that the other holds, and is open 
to no mistake. 

" Make Christ your most constant companion " — this 
is what it practically means for us. Be more under His 
influence than any other influence. Ten minutes spent 
in His society every day, ay, two minutes if it be face to 
face, and heart to heart, will make the whole day differ- 
ent. Every character has an inward spring, let Christ be 
it. Every action has a key-note, let Christ set it. Yes- 
terday you got a certain letter. You sat down and wrote 
a reply which almost scorched the paper. You picked 
the cruellest adjectives you knew and sent it forth, with- 
out a pang, to do its ruthless work. You did that because 
your life was set in the wrong key. You began the day 
with the mirror placed at the wrong angle. To-morrow, 
at daybreak, turn it towards Him, and even to your enemy 
the fashion of your countenance will be changed. What- 
ever you then do, one thing you will find you could not 
do — you could not write that letter. Your first impulse 
may be the same, your judgment may be unchanged, but 
if you try it the ink will dry on your pen, and you will 
rise from your desk an unavenged, but a greater and more 
Christian, man. Throughout the whole day your actions, 



22 THE CHANGED LIFE. 

down to the last detail, will do homage to that early 
vision. Yesterday you thought mostly about yourself. 
To-day the poor will meet you, and you will feed them. 
The helpless, the tempted, the sad, will throng about you, 
and each you will befriend. Where were all these people 
yesterday? Where they are to-day, but you did not see 
them. It is in reflected light that the poor are seen. But 
your soul to-day is not at the ordinary angle. " Things 
which are not seen " are visible. For a few short hours 
you live the Eternal Life. The eternal life, the life of 
faith, is simply the life of the higher vision. Faith is an 
attitude — a mirror set at the right angle. 

When to-morrow is over, and in the evening you re- 
view it, you will wonder how you did it. You will not 
be conscious that you strove for anything, or imitated 
anything, or crucified anything. You will be conscious 
of Christ ; that He was with you, that without compulsion 
you were yet compelled, that without force, or noise, or 
proclamation, the revolution was accomplished. You do 
not congratulate yourself as one who has done a mighty 
deed, or achieved a personal success, or stored up a fund 
of " Christian experience " to ensure the same result again. 
What you are conscious of is " the glory of the Lord." 
And what the world is conscious of, if the result be a true 
one, is also "the glory of the Lord." In looking at a 
mirror one does not see the mirror, or think of it, but only 
of what it reflects. For a mirror never calls attention to 
itself — except when there are flaws in it. 

That this is a real experience and not a vision, that this 
life is possible to men, is being lived by men to-day, is 
simple biographical fact. From a thousand witnesses I 
cannot forbear to summon one. The following are the 



THE ALCHEMY OF INFLUENCE. 23 

words of one of the highest intellects this age has known, 
a man who shared the burdens of his country as few have 
done, and who, not in the shadows of old age, but in the 
high noon of his success, gave this confession — I quote it 
with only a (ew abridgments — to the world : 

" I want to speak to-night only a little, but that little I 
desire to speak of the sacred name of Christ, who is my 
life, my inspiration, my hope, and my surety. I cannot 
help stopping and looking back upon the past. And I 
wish, as if I had never done it before, to bear witness, 
not only that it is by the grace of God, but that it is by 
the grace of God as manifested in Christ Jesus, that I am 
what I am. I recognise the sublimity and grandeur of 
the revelation of God in His eternal fatherhood as one 
that made the heavens, that founded the earth, and that 
regards all the tribes of the earth, comprehending them in 
one universal mercy ; but it is the God that is manifested 
in Jesus Christ, revealed by His life, made known by the 
inflections of His feelings, by His discourse and by His 
deeds — it is that God that I desire to confess to-night, 
and of whom I desire to say, ' By the love of God in 
Christ Jesus I am what I am.' 

" If you ask me precisely what I mean by that, I say, 
frankly, that more than any recognised influence of my 
father or my mother upon me ; more than the social in- 
fluence of all the members of my father's household ; 
more, so far as I can trace it, or so far as I am made 
aware of it, than all the social influences of every kind, 
Christ has had the formation of my mind and my disposi- 
tion. My hidden ideals of what is beautiful I have drawn 
from Christ. My thoughts of what is manly, and noble, 
and pure, have almost all of them arisen from the Lord 
Jesus Christ. Many men have educated themselves by 
reading Plutarch's Lives of the Ancient Worthies, and set- 
ting before themselves one and another of these that in 



24 THE CHANGED LIFE. 

different ages have achieved celebrity; and they have 
recognised the great power of these men on themselves. 
Now I do not perceive that poet, or philosopher, or re- 
former, or general, or any other great man, ever has dwelt 
in my imagination and in my thought as the simple Jesus 
has. For more than twenty-five years I instinctively have 
gone to Christ to draw a measure and a rule for every- 
thing. Whenever there has been a necessity for it, I have 
sought — and at last almost spontaneously — to throw my- 
self into the companionship of Christ ; and early, by my 
imagination, I could see Him standing and looking quietly 
and lovingly upon me. There seemed almost to drop 
from His face an influence upon me that suggested what 
was the right thing in the controlling of passion, in the 
subduing of pride, in the overcoming of selfishness ; and 
it is from Christ, manifested to my inward eye, that I have 
consciously derived more ideals, more models, more in- 
fluences, than from any human character whatever. 

" That is not all. I feel conscious that I have derived 
from the Lord Jesus Christ every thought that makes 
heaven a reality to me, and every thought that paves the 
road that lies between me and heaven. All my concep- 
tions of the progress of grace in the soul ; all the steps by 
which divine life is evolved ; all the ideals that overhang 
the blessed sphere which awaits us beyond this world — 
these are derived from the Saviour. The life that I now 
live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God. 

"That is not all. Much as my future includes all 
these elements which go to make the blessed fabric of 
earthly life, yet, after all, what the summer is compared 
with all its earthly products — flowers, and leaves, and 
grass — that is Christ compared with all the products of 
Christ in my mind and in my soul. All the flowers and 
leaves of sympathy ; all the twining joys that come from 
my heart as a Christian — these I take and hold in the 
future, but they are to me what the flowers and leaves of 
summer are compared with the sun that makes the sum- 



THE ALCHEMY OF INFLUENCE. 25 

mer. Christ is the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and 
the end of my better life. 

" When I read the Bible, I gather a great deal from the 
Old Testament, and from the Pauline portions of the New 
Testament ; but after all, I am conscious that the fruit of 
the Bible is Christ. That is what I read it for, and that 
is what I find that is worth reading. I have had a hun- 
ger to be loved of Christ. You all know, in some rela- 
tions, what it is to be hungry for love. Your heart seems 
unsatisfied till you can draw something more towards you 
from those that are dearest to you. There have been 
times when I have had an unspeakable heart-hunger for 
Christ's love. My sense of sin is never strong when I 
think of the law ; my sense of sin is strong when I think 
of love — if there is any difference between law and love. 
It is when drawing near the Lord Jesus Christ, and long- 
ing to be loved, that I have the most vivid sense of un- 
symmetry, of imperfection, of absolute unworthiness, and 
of my sinfulness. Character and conduct are never so 
vividly set before me as when in silence I bend in the pres- 
ence of Christ, revealed not in wrath, but in love to me. 
I never so much long to be lovely, that I may be loved, 
as when I have this revelation of Christ before my mind. 

" In looking back upon my experience, that part of my 
life which stands out, and which I remember most vividly, 
is just that part that has had some conscious association 
with Christ. All the rest is pale, and thin, and lies like 
clouds on the horizon. Doctrines, systems, measures, 
methods — what may be called the necessary mechanical 
and external part of worship ; the part which the senses 
would recognise — this seems to have withered and fallen 
off like leaves of last summer ; but that part which has 
taken hold of Christ abides." 

Can any one hear this life-music, with its throbbing re- 
frain of Christ, and remain unmoved by envy or desire? 
Yet, till we have lived like this we have never lived at all. 



THE FIRST EXPERIMENT. 

Then you reduce religion to a common Friendship? A 
common Friendship — who talks of a common Friendship? 
There is no such thing in the world. On earth no word 
is more sublime. Friendship is the nearest thing we know 
to what religion is. God is love. And to make religion 
akin to Friendship is simply to give it the highest expres- 
sion conceivable by man. But if by demurring to " a 
common friendship " is meant a protest against the great- 
est and the holiest in religion being spoken of in intelligible 
terms, then I am afraid the objection is all too real. Men 
always look for a mystery when one talks of sanctifica- 
tion ; some mystery apart from that which must ever be 
mysterious wherever Spirit works. It is thought some 
peculiar secret lies behind it, some occult experience which 
only the initiated know. Thousands of persons go to 
church every Sunday hoping to solve this mystery. At 
meetings, at conferences, many a time they have reached 
what they thought was the very brink of it, but somehow 
no further revelation came. Poring over religious books, 
how often were they not within a paragraph of it ; the 
next page, the next sentence, would discover all, and they 
would be borne on a flowing tide for ever. But nothing 
happened. The next sentence and the next page were 
read, and still it eluded them ; and though the promise of 
its coming kept faithfully up to the end, the last chapter 
found them still pursuing. Why did nothing happen? 
Because there was nothing to happen — nothing of the 
kind they were looking for. Why did it elude them? 



THE FIRST EXPERIMENT. 27 

Because there was no " it." When shall we learn that the 
pursuit of holiness is simply the pursuit of Christ ? When 
shall we substitute for the " it " of a fictitious aspiration, 
the approach to a Living Friend? Sanctity is in char- 
acter and not in moods ; Divinity in our own plain calm 
humanity, and in no mystic rapture of the soul. 

And yet there are others who, for exactly a contrary 
reason, will find scant satisfaction here. Their complaint 
is not that a religion expressed in terms of Friendship is 
too homely, but that it is still too mystical. To " abide " 
in Christ, to " make Christ our most constant companion," 
is to them the purest mysticism. They want something 
absolutely tangible and absolutely direct. These are not 
the poetical souls who seek a sign, a mysticism in excess ; 
but the prosaic natures whose want is mathematical defini- 
tion in details. Yet it is perhaps not possible to reduce 
this problem to much more rigid elements. The beauty 
of Friendship is its infinity. One can never evacuate life 
of mysticism. Home is full of it, love is full of it, religion 
is full of it. Why stumble at that in the relation of man 
to Christ which is natural in the relation of man to man? 

If any one cannot conceive or realise a mystical rela- 
tion with Christ, perhaps all that can be done is to help 
him to step on to it by still plainer analogies from com- 
mon life. How do I know Shakespeare or Dante? By 
communing with their words and thoughts. Many men 
know Dante better than their own fathers. He influences 
them more. As a spiritual presence he is more near to 
them, as a spiritual force more real. Is there any reason 
why a greater than Shakespeare or Dante, who also walked 
this earth, who left great words behind Him, who has 
great works everywhere in the world now, should not also 



28 THE CHANGED LIFE. 

instruct, inspire, and mould the characters of men? I do 
not limit Christ's influence to this. It is this, and it is 
more. But Christ, so far from resenting or discouraging 
this relation of Friendship, Himself proposed it. "Abide 
in Me " was almost His last word to the world. And He 
partly met the difficulty of those who feel its intangible- 
ness by adding the practical clause, " If ye abide in Me 
and My words abide in you." 

Begin with His words. Words can scarcely ever be 
long impersonal. Christ Himself was a Word, a word 
made Flesh. Make His words flesh ; do them, live them, 
and you must live Christ. "He that keepeth My conwiand- 
??ients, he it is that loveth Me." Obey Him and you must 
love Him. Abide in Him and you must obey Him. 
Cultivate His Friendship. Live after Christ, in His Spirit, 
as in His Presence, and it is difficult to think what more 
you can do. Take this at least as a first lesson, as intro- 
duction. If you cannot at once and always feel the play 
of His life upon yours, watch for it also indirectly. " The 
whole earth is full of the character of the Lord." Christ is 
the Light of the world, and much of His Light is reflected 
from things in the world — even from clouds. Sunlight is 
stored in every leaf, from leaf through coal, and it com- 
forts us thence when days are dark and we cannot see the 
sun. Christ shines through men, through books, through 
history, through nature, music, art. Look for Him there. 
" Every day one should either look at a beautiful picture, 
or hear beautiful music, or read a beautiful poem." The 
real danger of mysticism is not making it broad enough. 

Do not think that nothing is happening because you do 
not see yourself grow, or hear the whirr of the machinery. 
All great things grow noiselessly. You can see a mush- 
room grow, but never a child. Mr. Darwin tell us that 



THE FIRST EXPERIMENT. 29 

Evolution proceeds by " numerous, successive, and slight 
modifications." Paul knew that, and put it, only in more 
beautiful words, into the heart of his formula. He said 
for the comforting of all slowly perfecting souls that they 
grew " from character to character." " The inward man," 
he says elsewhere, " is renewed from day to day." All 
thorough work is slow ; all true development by minute, 
slight, and insensible metamorphoses. The higher the 
structure, moreover, the slower the progress. As the 
biologist runs his eye over the long Ascent of Life he sees 
the lowest forms of animals develop in an hour ; the next 
above these reach maturity in a day ; those higher still 
take weeks or months to perfect ; but the few at the top 
demand the long experiment of years. If a child and an 
ape are born on the same day the last will be in full pos- 
session of its faculties and doing the active work of life 
before the child has left its cradle. Life is the cradle of 
eternity. As the man is to the animal in the slowness of 
his evolution, so is the spiritual man to the natural man. 
Foundations which have to bear the weight of an eternal life 
must be surely laid. Character is to wear for ever ; who will 
wonder or grudge that it cannot be developed in a day? 
To await the growing of a soul, nevertheless, is an al- 
most Divine act of faith. How pardonable, surely, the 
impatience of deformity with itself, of a consciously despi- 
cable character standing before Christ, wondering, yearn- 
ing, hungering to be like that? Yet must one trust the 
process fearlessly, and without misgiving. "The Lord 
the Spirit " will do His part. The tempting expedient is, 
in haste for abrupt or visible progress, to try some method 
less spiritual, or to defeat the end by watching for effects 
instead of keeping the eye on the Cause. A photograph 
prints from the negative only while exposed to the sun, 



30 THE CHANGED LIFE. 

While the artist is looking to see how it is getting on he 
simply stops the getting on. Whatever of wise super- 
vision the soul may need, it is certain it can never be 
over-exposed, or that, being exposed, anything else in the 
world can improve the result or quicken it. The creation of 
a new heart, the renewing of a right spirit is an omnipotent 
work of God. Leave it to the Creator. " He which hath 
begun a good work in you will perfect it unto that day." 

No man, nevertheless, who feels the worth and so- 
lemnity of what is at stake will be careless as to his prog- 
ress. To become like Christ is the only thing in the 
world worth caring for, the thing before which every am- 
bition of man is folly, and all lower achievement vain. 
Those only who make this quest the supreme desire and 
passion of their lives can even begin to hope to reach it. 
If, therefore, it has seemed up to this point as if all de- 
pended on passivity, let me now assert, with conviction 
more intense, that all depends on activity. A religion of 
effortless adoration may be a religion for an angel but 
never for a man. Not in the contemplative, but in the 
active, lies true hope ; not in rapture, but in reality, lies 
true life ; not in the realm of ideals, but among tangible 
things, is man's sanctification wrought. Resolution, effort, 
pain, self-crucifixion, agony — all the things already dis- 
missed as futile in themselves must now be restored to 
office, and a tenfold responsibility laid upon them. For 
what is their office? Nothing less than to move the vast 
inertia of the soul, and place it, and keep it where the 
spiritual forces will act upon it. It is to rally the forces 
of the will, and keep the surface of the mirror bright and 
ever in position. It is to uncover the face which is to 
look at Christ, and draw down the veil when unhallowed 



THE FIRST EXPERIMENT. 3 1 

sights are near. You have, perhaps, gone with an as- 
tronomer to watch him photograph the spectrum of a star. 
As you entered the dark vault of the observatory you saw 
him begin by lighting a candle. To see the star with? 
No ; but to see to adjust the instrument to see the star 
with. It was the star that was going to take the photo- 
graph ; it was, also, the astronomer. For a long time he 
worked in the dimness, screwing tubes and polishing 
lenses and adjusting reflectors, and only after much labour 
the finely focussed instrument was brought to bear. Then 
he blew out the light, and left the star to do its work upon 
the plate alone. The day's task for the Christian is to 
bring his instrument to bear. Having done that he may 
blow out his candle. All the evidences of Christianity 
which have brought him there, all aids to Faith, all acts 
of Worship, all the leverages of the Church, all Prayer 
and Meditation, all girding of the Will — these lesser pro- 
cesses, these candle-light activities for that supreme hour 
may be set aside. But, remember, it is but for an hour. 
The wise man will be he who quickest lights his candle ; 
the wisest he who never lets it out. To-morrow, the next 
moment, he, a poor, darkened, blurred soul, may need it 
again to focus the Image better, to take a mote off the 
lens, to clear the mirror from a breath with which the 
world has dulled it. 

No readjustment is ever required on behalf of the Star. 
That is one great fixed point in this shifting universe. But 
the world moves. And each day, each hour, demands a 
further motion and readjustment for the soul. A telescope 
in an observatory follows a star by clockwork, but the 
clockwork of the soul is called the Will. Hence, while 
the soul in passivity reflects the Image of the Lord, the 



32 THE CHANGED LIFE. 

Will in intense activity holds the mirror in position lest 
the drifting motion of the world bear it beyond the line of 
vision. To " follow Christ " is largely to keep the soul in 
such position as will allow for the motion of the earth. 
And this calculated counteracting of the movements of a 
world, this holding of the mirror exactly opposite to the 
Mirrored, this steadying of the faculties unerringly, through 
cloud and earthquake, fire and sword, is the stupendous 
co-operating labour of the Will. It is all man's work. It 
is all Christ's work. In practice it is both ; in theory it 
is both. But the wise man will say in practice, " It de- 
pends upon myself." 

In the Galerie des Beaux Arts in Paris there stands a 
famous statue. It was the last work of a great genius, 
who, like many a genius, was very poor and lived in a 
garret, which served as studio and sleeping-room alike. 
When the statue was all but finished, one midnight a sud- 
den frost fell upon Paris. The sculptor lay awake in the 
fireless room and thought of the still moist clay, thought 
how the water would freeze in the pores and destroy in an 
hour the dream of his life. So the old man rose from his 
couch and heaped the bed-clothes reverently round his 
work. In the morning, when the neighbours entered the 
room the sculptor was dead. But the statue lived. 

The Image of Christ that is forming within us — that is 
life's one charge. Let every project stand aside for that. 
" Till Christ be formed," no man's work is finished, no re- 
ligion crowned, no life has fulfilled its end. Is the infinite 
task begun? When, how, are we to be different? Time 
cannot change men. Death cannot change men. Christ 
can. Wherefore put on Christ. 

THE END. 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



019 971 910 5 

HENRY DRUMMOND'S WORKS. 



THE PROGRAMME OF CHRISTIANITY, AND 
OTHER ADDRESSES. 

By Henry Drummond. Author's Edition, containing 
copyright matter, bound in white cloth, price, 75 cents. 

THE PROGRAMME OF CHRISTIANITY. 

A New Address by HENRY DRUMMOND. Leatherette, 
price, 35 cents. 

THE GREATEST THING IN THE WORLD. 

Illustrated Edition, cloth, price, $1.00 ; leatherette, gilt 
top, 35 cents ; paper. 10 cents. 

PAX VOBISCUM. 

The Second of the Series of which li The Greatest Thing 
in the World" is the first. Illustrated Edition, cloth, 
price, $1.00; leatherette, gilt top. 35 cents; paper, 
10 cents. 

THE CHANGED LIFE. 

An Address by Henry Drummond. The Third of the 
Series. Gilt top, leatherette, price, 35 cents ; paper, 
10 cents. 

NATURAL LAW IN THE SPIRITUAL WORLD. 

By Henry Drummond. F.R.S.E , F.G.S. Cloth, red 
top, title in gold. 458 pages, price, 75 cents. 

" FIRST: " A Talk with Boys. 

An Address delivered in Glasgow to the Boys' Brigade. 
Leatherette, gilt top, price. 35 cents ; paper, ro cents. 

BAXTER'S SECOND INNINGS. 

A Book for Boys. Cloth Edition, narrow, price, 75 
cents ; paper, 10 cents. 

AUTHOR'S ONLY EDITIONS. 

BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

From Henry Drummond. Specially selected from his 
writings by Elizabeth Cureton, for every day of the 
year, and handsomely bound in white cloth, specially 
designed cover, price. 75 cents. 

For sale by all booksellers, or sent by mail on receipt off 

JAMES POTT & CO., Publishers, 
14 & 16 Astor Place, = = New York. 



